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Syphilis, or "The French Disease"
Syphilis, or “the French Disease,” was a thing that actually happened. It was a venereal impairment usually contracted from any number of tarts, tramps, trollops, strumpets, bimbos, broads, sailors, sluts, floozies, doxies, easily made makes, concubines, paramours, prostitutes, escorts, camp followers, hookers, heathens, courtesans, mistresses, bedmates, chatelaines, perverts, nymphomanics, inamoratas, ladyloves, shack jobs, kept women, madams, procuresses, bawds, bargoyles, harlots, hussies, vamps, whores, wenches, jezebels, jades, slatterns, call girls, hustlers, scarlet women, streetwalkers, working girls, ladies of the evening and/or night, and of course, French people. Under a microscope syphilis resembles an abundance of wine bottle corkscrews, but instead of being the best option south of a sword at opening a wine bottle they uncork YOUR BRAIN. If you want to get all sorts of technical, syphilis is an infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. It's the “spiro-” part that denotes the corkscrew-like shape, see? Medicine is easy as hell. In the disease's primary stage it presents itself as a single horrible cold sore, but on your you-know-where. Its secondary stage involves multitudinous sores and a diffuse rash, particularly on the handpalms and footsoles, but often as veritable constellations of pustular papules and nodules over much of the corpus. In its tertiary stage it presents as neurological damage, cardiac trouble, and grotesque, open, weeping, carcinomic sores and fissures on the face and head as well as swollen tumor-like balls of inflammation which may be rodential or elephantine in size. The behavioral symptoms include apathy (Thank the Good Lord Christ, am I right?), lack of motor skills, seizures, and weird pupils that contract when focusing on near objects but not when exposed to bright lights. The cardiac symptoms can range from irregular heartbeat to aneurism, but like, seriously, who cares, any heart-related death is welcome at that point. It can also just be latent, “laying in the cut” as the doctors say, for years or even decades, like the patient eel who awaits its completely unawares prey to swim by its stagnant, tepid mudhole rather than hunting it outright in the open. Yes, just like an eel. Starting in 1932, the United States and the Tuskee Institute did the only rational move in studying syphilis, and found a few dozen poor black men in Alabama who had been infected and offered them free treatment, but in reality never treated them at all and just watched closely as they all got worse over the ensuing decades. Later, in the 1990s, President Bill Clinton gave a half-hearted apology to the two syphilitic men still alive at that point, but didn't shake hands with them or give out any of his famous “Big Mac” hugs. Later, in the 1940s, a mold called Penicillin was invented and that pretty much closed the shop for the ole' corkscrew crazies, at least among employed, health-insured populations of suburbanites, and sex became risk free again, except for pregnancy, the worst Sexually Transmitted Disease of them all (which itself was treated in 1970 with The Pill, and cured in 1973 with Roe v, Wade). Prior to the invention of anti-biotics, the primary means of syphilis treatment included bedrest and tearful prayer. Famous Syphilitics include Theo Van Gogh (brother of Herbert), Napoleon Bonaparte (world conqueror), Howard Hughes (Shut-in), Vladimir Lenin (Socialist sympathizer), Adolf Hitler (Time Magazine's Man of the Year, 1936), Friedrich Nietzsche (Misquoted blowhard), Oscar Wilde (Convict, Misogynist), every Pope, and Alphonse Capone (Philanthropist). See Also: Famous Fictional Syphilitics